


The Whitney Diaries

by ideal_girl (trainwreckdress)



Category: Smallville
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Future Fic, Minor Character Death, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-11-03
Updated: 2003-11-03
Packaged: 2017-10-21 19:32:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/228927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trainwreckdress/pseuds/ideal_girl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I knew that in order to appreciate something, especially love, it could feel like flying, like the best thing on the planet, but it also hurt a fucking lot when you crashed to the ground.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Whitney Diaries

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted as queenofalostart.

_prologue_  
He was a nonentity to her - a formless creature she could shape into whatever she needed at that very moment. His body was a blank template, which she stamped with imprints of her lips and fingers. Physically, she retained a fierce loyalty to him, never sharing of herself with others. Mentally, she guarded her mind with the ferocity of a lioness. It was something he admired - she was never swayed by popular thought or surrounding conditions, something he fell prey to for many years. But her heart, he knew, belonged to neither of them. It lay in a locked box, safe, but with a guardian blind to its contents.

  
 _blue_  
After a long day at work she liked to fuck without speaking, without kissing. She came home, fingers stained with ink and worry lines etched onto her forehead. Minimum clothing would be removed by both, just enough to join them together without much fuss. Almost always she'd position herself on the bottom, letting him ride her with his pants around his ankles, until they both came with a shivering sigh.

When it was over, she'd leave the room without saying a word and lock herself in the bathroom. Water would run and cabinets would open and shut until she returned, freshly scrubbed and clad in a furry bathroom, to find him fully dressed and preparing dinner. A mug of coffee - two sugars, no milk - would be steaming on the table.

Only then would she start talking, first in spurts of flippant rage, telling him about the latest broken-down piece of printing equipment, or how the new editorial assistant didn't know how to use the word "nonplussed." He'd nod his head, stirring soup or placing neatly cut vegetables on plain white plates. Inevitably, she'd get restless and start poking around the refrigerator for something to snack on while he finished his latest culinary masterpiece. The conversations would grow longer as they'd discuss the condition of the week-old lettuce languishing in the crisper or the questionable milk propped up on the top shelf.

"You ever wonder why they stopped putting those missing children ads on milk cartons?" She asked one day after a particularly violent physical engagement.

He glanced over his shoulder, smiling, the movement crinkling his eyes and coloring his face with years that didn't belong to him. "No," he replied. "That's your department."

She scoffed, hand hovering over the plastic jug. Her eyes flicked from the milk to his relaxed form. With a quick flick of her wrist, she hooked her finger into the handle of the jug and turned toward him.

Still looking at the missing child-free container, her voice broke the silence with a low growl.

"Taste this, would you?" she asked. Her gaze flickered up to meet his. "After all, that's why I keep you around."

With a swift, but powerful, motion revealing the intense physical conditioning he subjected his body to in the name of scholarship and vanity, he tossed the jug into the sink and pulled her up against his body. She arched up against him, desire and willingness evident in the curve of her spine. For the first time, she let him touch her in a brightly lit room, the open windows baring their forms to the street below.

  
 _green_  
We've never been a couple, at least not in the conventional sense. We lived together and studied side-by-side, but we were never anything more than companions to one another. Both fixated on the unattainable, we looked for solace within each other, creating a relationship based on need and convenience. Her independence allowed me to stretch the locked bonds life cursed me with, including a dying father and a house full of unrealized dreams. I like to think I taught her a thing or two about life - like how to shut up and listen to the rest of the world in order to hear what's being said behind the pretty words and ugly lies.

I think she was shocked at first, floored by the fact that we connected after a lifetime of placing me each other in stereotypical boxes. I know I was - not that I hadn't noticed the quiet beauty that hovered under the surface of her flashy outfits and larger-than-life hair. Not to mention she had a nice rack she liked to flaunt, something I still tease her about to this very day.

The first time we "did it," for the lack of a better, less flowery term, I noticed how blue her eyes were and how smooth her skin was under my sports-hardened fingertips. I remember how her hair framed her face like a blunt-cut halo, the color sharply contrasting with the dark red of the blanket we had hastily spread on the bed of my truck. She was so serious, even in the midst of her pleasure, so intent on not showing the slightest inkling of pain when I finally pushed into her. I had buried my face between her naked breasts, licking and sucking until I could feel her breath catch. With a firm hand she pushed me away, climbing above me and slowly lowered herself over my body, silently and intently taking me in, rising and falling, her body eclipsing the impossibly bright moon on the way up, revealing itself as she traveled down. She leaned over me and took the delicate flesh of my neck between her teeth and bit, hard. Surprised, I followed her lead, gripping her just a little too hard with one hand, the other busy between her legs. I had been rewarded with a growly pant as she came, drawing me up inside of her as blood and semen wet my fingers. I remember it was then that I finally let go of the static image of her that lived in my head - the good girl, my enemy's best friend, his "other." It was the last time I was surprised by her boldness.

Most of all, I remember what she said afterward, lying naked to the night sky, her head on my shoulder and fingers tracing alien patterns on my chest. Her voice was muffled, but her words were clear.

"This is totally Wall of Weird worthy," she said, a smile uncurling through the night.

"Yeah," I replied. "Yeah, I guess it is."

  
 _red_  
It didn't take long for Lana and I to self-destruct. After spilling my guts on her aunt's porch, I should have felt relieved. Instead I felt empty. She put her arms around me, whispered soothing things in my ear, and I squeezed out a few obligatory tears.

I wanted to scream.

Her reaction was so sincere, so empathetic - I should have been the happiest guy in the world. But I wasn't. She kissed me, and that thing she does with the tip of her tongue, which usually drove me wild, just irritated the shit out of me. I remembered smiling, a great big grin that hurt my cheeks, and telling her that she was the best girlfriend in the world.

We both knew that wasn't true. I had heard the rumors, hell, I felt the rumblings in my belly concerning her and Clark fucking Kent.

A dark shadow flitted over her face and her eyes - just for a second - darted past me, across the darkened fields toward the Kent Farm.

My mind rationalized the movement in a heartbeat - a bird flying by? a car's lights? a UFO? - but I knew it was all bullshit. I had known, even before the words "Clark" and "Kent" became a mainstay in Lana's vocabulary that we were drifting apart. Honestly, I expected it from the start. We had fallen into each others arms by necessity - after all, who else was the starting quarterback supposed to date besides the head cheerleader?

  
 _yellow_  
My hair was always the one thing I did have to work at - wash, dry, quick comb through, out the door. I knew guys in high school that would break out the gel if the wind even tried to top five miles an hour.

There was this one guy, Vinnie Laterni, starting cornerback my senior year, who would be so involved with getting his hair just right after practice that he wouldn't even notice it when Carl Ryker, second-string tight end, would whip off his towel and dance naked on the benches to the whoops and hollers of the locker room. Vinnie would finish laying the last hair in place, turn to the hooting crowd and make some comments about "ya fuckin' fairies." Man, we would just laugh and laugh. Good times.

Anyway, back to the point I was trying to make: I never had to worry about my hair. I inherited my mother's hair, straight and blonde, the color of husked corn skins, which did pretty much whatever I told it to do. In high school, I kept it long enough to appear stylish, but short enough to escape the "hippy" or "skater" label. Quite frankly, I didn't give a fuck about it, as long as it didn't interfere with my playing. Yeah, it was a little boring, and when I look at pictures, I cringe at how whitebread I looked.

So, after Lana and I exploded (more on that later), I did a couple of stupid things to let off some steam. One of those things - the only one I don't regret - was shaving my head.

I sped home after a particular grueling practice (Who the fuck cared if crashed another truck - my father would buy me a new one.), stomped up the front steps, threw my equipment down and generally tried to make a noisy spectacle of myself. Coach had given me some shit about being too violent on the field, telling me "not to let a girl get in the way of football." Asshole. I ran up the stairs, past my mother and sister sitting in the living room with their mouth's open, calling questions, and into the bathroom, where I proceeded to lock myself in, sliding the small end table my mother kept stocked with paper goods in front of the door for good measure. I shucked my letterman's jacket off, tossing it down the laundry chute. The ridiculously expensive J. Crew sweater that I patiently explained to my mother was necessary for my social survival followed soon after, along with my hand-dyed Abercrombie and Finch jeans. Fucking hand dyed. I was such an asshole to my mother about them, too.

I finally stood in the brightly lit room, naked except for a Fruit-of-the-Loom undershirt and some nondescript boxer briefs that my mother had an inexplicable and never-ending stash of in the linen closet. I stood there and stared at myself in the mirror for a good 10 minutes, memorizing.

I don't know what I was looking for, but I remember just wanting to know who I was underneath the social exterior I had created. Who the fuck was Whitney, stripped of his assorted sports jerseys, his pretty girlfriend, his powerful father? Damned hell if I knew at the time.

Acting on some out-of-body impulse, my hands started to open and close cabinets and drawers until I found my father's clippers hidden underneath my mother's hairdryer. The realization that my father had let his beard grow for the first time since I was a little kid startled me, and I added the thought to the mental record of my father's deteriorating condition. I plugged in the clippers, my hands shaking a little as I adjusted to blade for a close, but not skin-tight, shave. I flipped the switch, firing it up, and stood there for a few seconds as the buzzing machine shook around in my hand.

My mother's footsteps sounded on the stairs, tentative steps that were slowly creeping closer. "Whitney, honey," she called. "Are you all right?"

I looked down at the clippers and back up at my reflection. Pausing long enough to offer her some excuse, waiting until she abandoned the staircase, I lifted the clippers to the crown of my head.

Gold-colored clumps fell onto my shoulders, sticking to my shirt in spiderweb patterns and scattering across the sink. Belatedly, I thought I should have put some towels or newspapers down, something to catch the clippings. I paid for that lapse in concentration with a nick to an especially sensitive part of my head, just behind my right earlobe. Blood leaked out, trailing down my neck, but I didn't care and kept shaving until my hair was a little more than a centimeter's worth of fuzz covering my scalp.

I made one hell of a mess that day, and my sister, the wonderfully kind and irritatingly complex person she is, cleaned it up without ever mentioning it to me or anyone else. I think she understood what I was going through - after all, she died her blonde hair jet black after she broke up with "Steve," light of my father's life. You know the kind - good-looking, liked dogs, watched the game with my dad every Thanksgiving, couldn't wait to marry my sister so he could knock her up and then run around with his secretary. Yeah, that guy. I was only 14 at the time, but I remember my dad freaking out, asking Georgiana if she was a "fuckin' drug addict" the second she walked through the door. He threw Steve's name around a couple of times, causing her to barricade herself in her room. She wouldn't come out for dinner and wouldn't let anyone bring her any food. I was worried, because, you know, it was my big sister, and you gotta have dinner, so I slipped a couple of slices of Kraft cheese and some unwrapped Fruit Rollups (the only things that would clear the jamb) underneath the door so she wouldn't starve. Whatever, I was a kid.

I didn't find out until later how much she appreciated the gesture, when she told Chloe about it at Dad's funeral. We had only been "dating" for a few months, nothing compared to the marathon two years I slaved through with Lana. But Georgie always could read people, and the fact that she trusted Chloe from the get-go really meant something. She later told me that she thought Chloe tempered my rage, and I tempered her brashness, but that we both shared a truckload of insecurities. What can I say, Georgie's a psychiatrist in Metropolis now, serving the most fucked up rich-and-famous people the city can produce. In that musty reception area, I realized that what looked and seemed like the way I should live my life was a crock of shit, and that nothing good came easy. I knew that in order to appreciate something, especially love, it could feel like flying, like the best thing on the planet, but it also hurt a fucking lot when you crashed to the ground. My sister, with her fake black hair, hugged Chloe with a fierceness I had only seen between family members, and taught me a hell of a lot that day.

It wasn't until I had handed my sobbing mother off to my uncle outside the funeral home and made my way inside to grab my coat that I fully understood what my sister was trying to tell me. I walked into the quiet, darkened room, lit only by dimmed spotlights that illuminated the closed casket and the shining picture frame that perched on top. It was surrounded by light purple flowers, a unexpected, but appreciated gift from Lex Luthor. Chloe was standing in front of the coffin with my jacket, the guest book, and a number of cards that had slipped from the bulging receiving basket in her arms. All things I would have forgotten, details that I never paid attention to before. One of her hands was outstretched, rubbing the shiny wood with delicate fingertips. Moving behind her, I placed my hands on her shoulders, which were covered by this impossibly soft scarf that tickled my palms. Her arm moved in a blur, off the coffin and up to her chest, making an imperceptible Sign of the Cross. She leaned into me, hands catching mine. Without turning around, she spoke, leaning her head into the crook of my neck, exposing her throat and an eyeful of cleavage.

"What are you waiting for, Fordman," she asked, quietly. "Say goodbye."

  
 _orange_  
Something that never fails to make me laugh at the absurdity of life is how much one can glorify their past. I think of high school, and I see myself as a shining beacon of the Great American Male, blonde and swaddled in the blankets of rough-and-tumble sports and cheap domestic beer.

My life wasn't perfect, from the long hours of silence that plagued the dinner table to the sacks I took on the football field, but at least I was used to it. Familiarity only breeds contempt when you realize what alternatives the world has to offer. I didn't realize that it wasn't okay to go for weeks without speaking to my father. I didn't know that beating the crap out of anonymous uniformed individuals all in the name of school spirit was absolutely moronic.

I was content in my ignorance, which spanned more than just my family and school life. I was dumb to how gently Kent was insinuating himself into Lana's life, how firmly his presence was taking hold on every level. Part of me was glad when he started helping her out with her latest charity project - hell, it got me off the hook. I never minded being there for her, or anyone else, but as time went on and I realized that she hardly ever returned the favor (After she quit the cheerleading squad, did she come to one exhibition game, one practice? No.), I stopped trying and allowed, hell, welcomed Kent to that part of her. Besides, she was always questioning - always wanting to know every single thing I was thinking about. She didn't understand that sometimes the answer was really "nothing." In retrospect, I guess I was saying, loud and clear, "Please take my girlfriend off my hands so I can be alone in my head." And he did. Hell, I should thank him for it. If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't have had a reason to call it off and I would probably be stuck in Smallville, minding the store and siring the six perfect children she used to dream about.

As much as I hate the fucker, thank God for Clark-fucking-Kent. If it wasn't for him, Lana and I never would have broken up, and I never would have had the balls to do the unexpected.

Falling out of love with Lana was a gradual process. It wasn't as if I woke up one morning and said, "Fuck it!" It was a natural progression from gentle camaraderie to fierce dislike. I wouldn't say that I hated her in the end, but I sure as hell didn't like her very much.

But, our relationship was too entrenched in one another's hopes and dreams to end quietly and easily. Sometimes I thought she was just looking for a ticket out of Smallville, and I was the most likely candidate. She wanted to ride my scholarship all the way to Metropolis even more than I did, her eyes filling with an artificial urban glow each and every time we discussed "the future."

She told me that she wanted to do great things, for hers to be a name that children learned in social studies class, alongside Sojourner Truth and Abraham Lincoln. She wanted to be the greatest emancipator of all - liberating humanity as a whole from its bonds of class, race, and gender.

"We are more than the sum of our parts," she would say, dark strands falling in her face from the accompanying flip of her hair. "We have to be, or everything humanity has worked for it all for nothing."

Once upon a time, idealism like that amused me - excited me, even. But as I learned who Lana was underneath the glossy surface, I realized how immature and insipid her outlook, even dressed up in fancy words and passionate cadence, really was when it was applied to the real world.

She was a cheerleader, through and through, no matter how hard she tried to distance herself from the stereotype. Everyone was good, every rule was just, everything would work itself out in the end.

Bullshit.

After being saddled with a dying father and a fucked-up shoulder, I knew better. People aren't good, some rules must be broken, and everything only works out in the end if you claw scratch on your way there. There is nothing inherently pleasant about our existence. There is no such thing as a greater good.

Once I realized that, I noticed that the machinery in the fields beyond Lana's house look like cows dancing above bodies of sickly green water. Fuck. Sometimes I feel like I'm going to suffocate under the weight of the horizon. Kansas is so fucking flat.

  
 _black_  
I don't remember much about the day my father died.

It was fucking hot out, I remember that. It was one of the hottest August's on record - the kind with the damp, wet heat that I had never experienced before. Even though I had given up football as a vocation and avocation nearly a year before, I still ran a five miles every morning to keep in shape and shake loose some nervous energy before heading down to the store. After my father's second heart attack, the lawyers had passed the administrative and managerial reigns of the place to me, officially 18 and considered legal in the eyes of the Kansas State Courts. My mother was under heavy sedation, administered by our family practitioner, unable to cope with the fact that, in fact, her husband was dying. She spent most of her time in the hospital between visits to dad and visits to the psychologist. My sister came and went, black hair dusty from the open-top ride of the old school Cadillac convertible she bought after landing her first placement. After graduation, I was the only constant in the house and at the store. After a few months, the dog barked at my mother like she was a stranger. I did all the grocery shopping and my own laundry. An alarm clock became unnecessary, as the Sun peaking through the curtains would be enough to get me out of bed earlier than I ever though possible.

Every morning was the same - roll out of bed, trip over the dog on the way to the bathroom, throw on shorts and a tee shirt, toe on my sneakers and hit the road. I used to run all the way from my house to the Beanery, where I'd pick up two coffees, one regular and one black with a ridiculous amount of sugar. The owner knew me after all those years of leaving bad tips and messy tables, but after I cut her a sweet deal on shirts for her staff she always had a smile and a copy of the Smallville Ledger waiting. I never had the heart to tell her the coffee wasn't for me.

From the Beanery, I would catch the open-air trolley uptown to where the Sullivans lived, in one of the newer parts of town. By the time I reached the house, it would invariably be sweltering hot and my shirt would be stuck to every square inch of my upper body. It was ridiculous, riding that train every day, clutching two cups of hot coffee, sweating my balls off. But the look on her face, each and every morning, was worth it.

I'd get off the trolley, usually a few stops early and race it. Invariably, it would win, but some days, when Mrs. Mortenson's arthritis was acting up and Sammy needed to help her up the steps, I would arrive at Chloe's house just as it passed. Bells would jingle and elderly voices would tell me to "be careful with that hot coffee, young man!" Usually, if I timed it right, Gabe would be backing out the garage just as I arrived. A scratchy, bootleg recording of The Doors or Led Zeppelin would float out of the open window of the car as I handed him the regular coffee.

"Whitney, you're fantastic!" or some other version of enthusiastic praise that I'd never heard tumble out of my own father's mouth would follow me into the darkened house. Mary Ann would be in the kitchen, glued to the tiny television playing a muted local news program perched on top of the refrigerator as she chewed noisily on whatever fruit the Kent's were growing that season. We'd greet each other and she'd wrinkle her nose at my sweat-stained tee shirt and the sweet-smelling coffee cup and offer me some fruit. Mouth full of apple, pear, or peach (Because, like anyone, I can't say no to a Sullivan woman.), I'd clomp up the stairs toward the sounds of blaring music and slamming cabinets.

Somehow, over all that noise, she'd hear me coming up the stairs, and come barreling out of the bathroom, clad in anything from a towel (if I was lucky) to a robe to a business suit.

She'd look at the coffee like a woman dying of thirst, but it was nothing compared to the way she would look at me - hell, still looks at me. I'm one lucky bastard. Anyway, she'd grab the coffee, take a deep, sugary gulp of the now-lukewarm liquid and shake her head vigorously.

"You do realize that you're addicted to caffeine, right?" I'd ask, looping an arm around her waist.

"Happily," she'd reply with a grin.

It was the same way the morning my father died. We stood there staring goofily at one another when the phone rang. Her mother answered it in the kitchen and we leaned into each other, peering down the stairs as if to hear with our eyes who could have been calling that early in the morning. I remember that it she was wearing a bright green robe, and when she leaned forward, it parted open and gave me an eyeful.

"It's probably my dad," she said, her breath passing over the skin of my neck. "Forgot his passcard or something."

"Oh, really?" I answered, moving the terrycloth over her shoulder, my fingers moving along her collarbone.

"Whitney!" Her voice admonished, but her eyes encouraged. Lips and tongues met, tasting of coffee and toothpaste and summer. Before we could get in any major trouble a vicious clatter from downstairs and a barely contained curse propelled us both down the stairs and into the kitchen. Mrs. Sullivan stood among broken porcelain and spilled tea, holding an apple in one hand and the phone in another, looking at the television like a blind woman.

"I'll tell him," she said, her voice sliding my head, making it spin and pushing me up against the banister. "Whitney..."

"I know," I said, and I did. I did know. "He's dead."

  
 _epilogue_  
The first time he tasted her, he knew she wasn't The One. They had kissed after a brief, awkward, decidedly unromantic moment, perched on the porch like two housecats getting ready to bolt at the sight of a stranger. They were young, he inexperienced, her even more so, and they didn't quite know where to put their hands or tongues or lips.

He remembered that he had asked his older sister (after she caught him making out with her stuffed animals) how he would know what to do when he finally got a girlfriend, she had blushed and told him, "Well, 'Ney, you just know. Trust me."

He hadn't understood her then, being all of 10 years old and just starting to comprehend what his body would someday be fully capable of. But he understood, years later when he kissed Lana on the lips, in the dark, on that porch. He thought, for a second, that the dizziness he felt was romantic exhilaration, the thrill of a hunt ended. It wasn't until he left, until She took up residence in his every thought and movement, that he understood that taste.

It wasn't love. Or thrill. Or even passion.

It was regret.

Lana tasted like regrets - distilled and pure. Her intentions would pass through her and into him, pushing and molding him into what she wanted, what she was taught to want, and teaching him to want it, too.

Then Chloe kissed him. And she tasted like the future.


End file.
